Thursday, September 2, 2010

I publish articles every Monday (cycling), Wednesday (user experience) and Friday (pragmatic environmentalism). Other days I might write if I've something particularly burning-important to say.Today, two nibble-size topics in your bonus mouthful.

I'm Not Giving up on Summer

It's been cooler every morning this week; the temperatures dropping from the low-to-mid twenties during the day time to single-figures overnight. Earlier in the week, there was condensation on the cars and windows when I left the house.

Today, it was again cool; so much so that as I got the bike ready for the Morning Commute, I considered moving to my autumn wardrobe, putting my jacket on.

In the event, I stayed with the arm warmers and I'm glad that I did. Although my fingers were a little cold at the start of the ride, they soon warmed through enough and I enjoyed the ride.

UX and the Apostrophe

Just the other day I received an email entitled "How to Kill Your Brand in One Easy Step", stufffed full of spelling mistakes.

It took me a moment to realise that it wasn't intended as a cautionary example.

The way my brain is wired, spelling mistakes tend to leap out at me. I'm not overly precious about spelling mistakes; I do think, however, that in our digital age it's incredibly easy to run automated spelling checks that will find words that are plain non-existent. I also think it's bordering on inexcusable when someone is making a particular point about their brand, and they stumble over such a small detail.

Another word I see misused a lot is "it's". When used in the possessive, this word does not have an apostrophe - see Wikipedia, for a thorough overview of the topic.

Today, I was disappointed to see this particular mistake over at the excellent UX Booth, reading about how the UX Booth "celebrates it's guest authors" (my emphasis). But not, apparently, its grammar. This made me sad.

User experience is about layers of experience; and such an obvious typo - even such a common one - really stands out.